Category / Clothes

1. NOT SO TOUGH. My daughters and I have decidedly different responses to single-digit temperatures. They leave the house with whole patches of skin exposed to the elements, while I wrap myself from head to toe in double layers. I don’t know if it’s because I’m not as tough as they are, or just a whole lost wiser. For my ego’s sake, I’ll go with wiser.

1. SORTA PERFECT. Our youngest daughter is one of those rare kids who, after asking for a telescope for Christmas, regularly used it as more than a coat rack. On a recent night, she asked me and my wife to join her on one of her astronomy expeditions. I thought it was a little nippy for stargazing but she and my wife convinced me to “have some fun,” so we ventured away from our-tree lined yard to the hill of a nearby cemetery for a better, unobstructed view of the sky. While my daughter fiddled for quite a long while, adjusting her focus, I kicked my feet to keep warm, and worried about our decision to bring our Yorkie past the “no dogs allowed” sign at the cemetery’s gate. Once she had her equipment focused, my daughter asked me to take a quick look. She had the scope trained on the moon, and all I saw was a slightly magnified version of the gray and white swirls I could see with the naked eye, but of course I told her, “Wow, cool.” When she took over, she exclaimed, “The Langrenus Crater and the Sea of Fertility are so clear, it’s amazing.” She looked ready to boil over, she was so excited. My wife, who had wisely wrapped much warmer than I, grinned to let me know this was one of those rare moments of parenting perfection that you had to fully savor, so I did, I really did for a full 10 seconds before another cool breeze made my shoulders shudder. Then I made what seemed a perfectly reasonable suggestion, “Hey, maybe it’s time to pack up and head back to where it’s warm.”